Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism

A POPULAR OUTLINE

I. CONCENTRATION OF PRODUCTION AND MONOPOLIES

The enormous growth of industry and the remarkably rapid

    concentration of production in ever-larger enterprises are one of

    the most characteristic features of capitalism. Modern production

    censuses give most complete and most exact data on this

    process.

In Germany, for example, out of every 1,000 industrial

    enterprises, large enterprises, i.e., those employing more than 50

    workers, numbered three in 1882, six in 1895 and nine in 1907; and

    out of every 100 workers employed, this group of enterprises

    employed 22, 30 and 37, respectively. Concentration of

    production, however, is much more intense than the concentration

    of workers, since labour in the large enterprises is much more

    productive. This is shown by the figures on steam-engines and

    electric motors. If we take what in Germany is called industry in

    the broad sense of the term, that is, including commerce,

    transport, etc., we get the following picture. Large-scale

    enterprises, 30,588 out of a total of 3,265,623, that is to say,

    0.9 per cent. These enterprises employ 5,700,000 workers out of a

    total of 14,400,000, i.e., 39.4 per cent; they use 6,600,000 steam

    horse power out of a total of 8,800,000, i.e., 75.3 per cent, and

    1,200,000 kilowatts of electricity out of a total of 1,500,000,

    i.e., 77.2 per cent.

Less than one-hundredth of the total number of enterprises

    utilisemore than three-fourthsof the total amount of

    steam and electric power! Two million nine hundred and seventy

    thousand small enterprises (employing up to five workers),

    constituting 91 per cent of the total, utilise only 7 per cent of

    the total amount of steam and electric power! Tens of thousands of

    huge enterprises are everything; millions of small ones are

    nothing.

In 1907, there were in Germany 586 establishments employing one

    thousand and more workers, nearlyone-tenth(1,380,000)

    of the total number of workers employed in industry, and they

    consumedalmost one-third(32 per cent) of the total

    amount of steam and electric

power.[1]As we shall see, money capital and the

    banks make this superiority of a handful of the largest

    enterprises still more overwhelming, in the most literal sense of

    the word, i.e., millions of small, medium and even some big

    “proprietors” are in fact in complete subjection to some hundreds

    of millionaire financiers.

In another advanced country of modern capitalism, the United

    States of America, the growth of the concentration of production

    is still greater. Here statistics single out industry in the

    narrow sense of the word and classify enterprises according to the

    value of their annual output. In 1904 large-scale enterprises with

    an output valued at one million dollars and over, numbered 1,900

    (out of 216,180, i.e., 0.9 per cent). These employed 1,400,000

    workers (out of 5,500,000, i.e., 25.6 per cent) and the value of

    their output amounted to $5,600,000,000 (out of $14,800,000,000,

    i.e., 38 per cent). Five years later, in 1909, the corresponding

    figures were: 3,060 enterprises (out of 268,491, i.e., 1.1 per

    cent) employing 2,000,000 workers (out of 6,600,000, i.e., 30.5

    per cent) with an output valued at $9,000,000,000 (out of

    $20,700,000,000, i.e., 43.8

per cent).[2]

Almost half the total production of all the enterprises of the

    country was carried on byone-hundredth partof these

    enterprises! These 3,000 giant enterprises embrace 258 branches of

    industry. From this it can be seen that at a certain stage of its

    development concentration itself, as it were, leads straight to

    monopoly, for a score or so of giant enterprises can easily arrive

    at an agreement, and on the other hand, the hindrance to

    competition, the tendency towards monopoly, arises from the huge

    size of the enterprises. This transformation of competition into

    monopoly is one of the most important—if not the most

    important—phenomena of modern capitalist economy, and we

    must deal with it in greater detail. But first we must clear up

    one possible misunderstanding.

American statistics speak of 3,000 giant enterprises in 250

    branches of industry, as if there were only a dozen enterprises of

    the largest scale for each branch of industry.

But this is not the case. Not in every branch of industry are

    there large-scale enterprises; and moreover, a very important

    feature of capitalism in its highest stage of development is

    so-calledcombinationof production, that is to say, the

    grouping in a single enterprise of different branches of industry,

    which either represent the consecutive stages in the processing of

    raw materials (for example, the smelting of iron ore into

    pig-iron, the conversion of pig-iron into steel, and then,

    perhaps, the manufacture of steel goods)—or are auxiliary

    to one another (for example, the utilisation of scrap, or of

    by-products, the manufacture of packing materials, etc.).

“Combination,” writes Hilferding, “levels out the fluctuations

    of trade and therefore assures to the combined enterprises a more

    stable rate of profit. Secondly, combination has the effect of

    eliminating trade. Thirdly, it has the effect of rendering

    possible technical improvements, and, consequently, the

    acquisition of superprofits over and above those obtained by the

    ‘pure’ (i.e,, non-combined) enterprises. Fourthly, it strengthens

    the position of the combined enterprises relative to the ‘pure’

    enterprises, strengthens them in the competitive struggle in

    periods of serious depression, when the fall in prices of raw

    materials does not keep pace with the fall in prices of

    manufactured

goods.”[3]

The German bourgeois economist, Heymann, who has written a book

    especially on “mixed,” that is, combined, enterprises in the

    German iron industry, says: “Pure enterprises perish, they are

    crushed between the high price of raw material and the low price

    of the finished product.” Thus we get the following picture:

    “There remain, on the one hand, the big coal companies, producing

    millions of tons yearly, strongly organised in their coal

    syndicate, and on the other, the big steel plants, closely allied

    to the coal mines, having their own steel syndicate. These giant

    enterprises, producing 400,000 tons of steel per annum, with a

    tremendous output of ore and coal and producing finished steel

    goods, employing10,000 workers quartered in company houses, and

    sometimes owning their own railways and ports, are the typical

    representatives of the German iron and steel industry. And

    concentration goes on further and further. Individual enterprises

    are becoming larger and larger. An ever-increasing number of

    enterprises in one, or in several different industries, join

    together in giant enterprises, backed up and directed by half a

    dozen big Berlin banks. In relation to the German mining industry,

    the truth of the teachings of Karl Marx on concentration is

    definitely proved; true, this applies to a country where industry

    is protected by tariffs and freight rates. The German mining

    industry is ripe for

expropriation.”[4]

Such is the conclusion which a bourgeois economist who, by way

    of exception, is conscientious, had to arrive at. It must be noted

    that he seems to place Germany in a special category because her

    industries are protected by higher tariffs. But this is a

    circumstance which only accelerates concentration and the

    formation of monopolist manufacturers’ associations, cartels,

    syndicates, etc. It is extremely important to note that in

    free-trade Britain, concentration also leads to monopoly, although

    somewhat later and perhaps in another form. Professor Hermann

    Levy, in his special work of research entitledMonopolies,

    Cartels and Trusts,based on data on British economic

    development, writes as follows:

“In Great Britain it is the size of the enterprise and its high

    technical level which harbour a monopolist tendency. This, for one

    thing, is due to the great investment of capital per enterprise,

    which gives rise to increasing demands for new capital for the new

    enterprises and thereby renders their launching more

    difficult. Moreover (and this seems to us to be the more important

    point), every new enterprise that wants to keep pace with the

    gigantic enterprises that have been formed by concentration would

    here produce such an enormous quantity of surplus goods that it

    could dispose of them only by being able to sell them profitably

    as a result of an enormous increase in demand; otherwise, this

    surpluswould force prices down to a level that would be

    unprofitable both for the new enterprise and for the monopoly

    combines.” Britain differs from other countries where protective

    tariffs facilitate the formation of cartels in that monopolist

    manufacturers’ associations, cartels and trusts arise in the

    majority of cases only when the number of the chief competing

    enterprises has been reduced to “a couple of dozen or so.” “Here

    the influence of concentration on the formation of large

    industrial monopolies in a whole sphere of industry stands out

    with crystal

clarity.”[5]

Half a century ago, when Marx was writingCapital,free competition appeared to the overwhelming majority of

    economists to be a “natural law”. Official science tried, by a

    conspiracy of silence, to kill the works of Marx, who by a

    theoretical and historical analysis of capitalism had proved that

    free competition gives rise to the concentration of production,

    which, in turn, at a certain stage of development, leads to

    monopoly. Today, monopoly has become a fact. Economists are

    writing mountains of books in which they describe the diverse

    manifestations of monopoly, and continue to declare in chorus that

    “Marxism is refuted.” But facts are stubborn things, as the

    English proverb says, and they have to be reckoned with, whether

    we like it or not. The facts show that differences between

    capitalist countries, e.g., in the matter of protection or free

    trade, only give rise to insignificant variations in the form of

    monopolies or in the moment of their appearance; and that the rise

    of monopolies, as the result of the concentration of production,

    is a general and fundamental law of the present stage of

    development of capitalism.

For Europe, the time when the new capitalismdefinitelysuperseded the old can be established with fair precision; it

    was the beginning of the twentieth century. In one of the latest

    compilations on the history of the “formation of monopolies”, we

    read:

“Isolated examples of capitalist monopoly could be cited from

    the period preceding 1860; in these could be discerned the embryo

    of the forms that are so common today; butall this undoubtedly

    represents the prehistory of the cartels. The real beginning of

    modern monopoly goes back, at the earliest, to the sixties. The

    first important period of development of monopoly commenced with

    the international industrial depression of the seventies and

    lasted until the beginning of the nineties.” “If we examine the

    question on a European scale, we will find that the development of

    free competition reached its apex in the sixties and seventies. It

    was then that Britain completed the construction of her old-style

    capitalist organisation. In Germany, this organisation had entered

    into a fierce struggle with handicraft and domestic industry, and

    had begun to create for itself its own forms of existence.”

“The great revolution commenced with the crash of 1873, or

    rather, the depression which followed it and which, with hardly

    discernible interruptions in the early eighties, and the unusually

    violent, but short-lived boom round about 1889, marks twenty-two

    years of European economic history ... .. During the short boom of

    1889-90, the system of cartels was widely resorted to in order to

    take advantage of favourable business conditions. An

    ill-considered policy drove prices up still more rapidly and still

    higher than would have been the case if there had been no

    cartels, and nearly all these cartels perished ingloriously in the

    smash. Another five-year period of bad trade and low prices

    followed, but a new spirit reigned in industry; the depression was

    no longer regarded as something to be taken for granted: it was

    regarded as nothing more than a pause before another boom.

“The cartel movement entered its second epoch: instead of being

    a transitory phenomenon, the cartels have become one of the

    foundations of economic life. They are winning one field of

    industry after another, primarily, the raw materials industry. At

    the beginning of the nineties the cartel system had already

    acquired in the organisation of the coke syndicate on the model of

    which the coal syndicate was later formed—a cartel

    technique which has hardly been improved on. For the first time

    the great boom at the close of the nineteenth century and the

    crisis of 1900-03 occurred entirely—in the mining and iron

    industries at least—under the aegis of the cartels. And

    while at that time it appeared to be something novel, now the

    general public takes it forgranted that large spheres of economic

    life have been, as a general rule, removed from the realm of free

    competition.”[6]

Thus, the principal stages in the history of monopolies are the

    following: (1) 1860-70, the highest stage, the apex of development

    of free competition; monopoly is in the barely discernible,

    embryonic stage. (2) After the crisis of 1873, a lengthy period of

    development of cartels; but they are still the exception. They are

    not yet durable. They are still a transitory phenomenon. (3) The

    boom at the end of the nineteenth century and the crisis of

    1900-03. Cartels become one of the foundations of the whole of

    economic life. Capitalism has been transformed into

    imperialism.

Cartels come to an agreement on the terms of sale, dates of

    payment, etc. They divide the markets among themselves. They fix

    the quantity of goods to be produced. They fix prices. They divide

    the profits among the various enterprises, etc.

The number of cartels in Germany was estimated at about 250 in

    1896 and at 385 in 1905, with about 12,000 firms

participating.[7]But it is

    generally recognised that these figures are underestimations. From

    the statistics of German industry for 1907 we quoted above, it is

    evident that even these 12,000 very big enterprises probably

    consume more than half the steam and electric power used in the

    country. In the United States of America, the number of trusts in

    1900 was estimated at 185 and in 1907, 250. American statistics

    divide all industrial enterprises into those belonging to

    individuals, to private firms or to corporations. The latter in

    1904 comprised 23.6 per cent, and in 1909, 25.9 per cent, i.e.,

    more than one-fourth of the total industrial enterprises in the

    country. These employed in 1904, 70.6 per cent, and in 1909, 75.6

    per cent, i.e., more than three-fourthsof the total

    wage-earners. Their output at these two dates was valued at

    $10,900,000,000 and $16,300,000,000, i.e., 73.7 per cent and 79.0

    per cent of the total, respectively.

At times cartels and trusts concentrate in their hands seven-

    or eight-tenths of the total output of a given branch of

    industry. The Rhine-Westphalian Coal Syndicate, at its foundation

    in 1893, concentrated 86.7 per cent of the total coal output of

    the area, and in 1910 it already concentrated 95.4

per cent.[8]The monopoly

    so created assures enormous profits, and leads to the formation of

    technical production units of formidable magnitude. The famous

    Standard Oil Company in the United States was founded in 1900: “It

    has an authorised capital of $150,000,000. It issued $100,000,000

    common and $106,000,000 preferred stock. From 1900 to 1907 the

    following dividends were paid on the latter: 48, 48, 45, 44, 36,

    40, 40, 40 per cent in the respective years, i.e., in all,

    $367,000,000. From 1882 to 1907, out of total net profits

    amounting to $889,000,000, $606,000,000 were distributed in

    dividends, and the rest went to reserve

capital.[9]“In 1907 the various

    works of the United States Steel Corporation employed no less than

    210,180 people. The largest enterprise in the German mining

    industry, Gelsenkirchener Bergwerksgesellschaft, in 1908 had a

    staff of 46,048 workers and office

employees.”[10]In 1902, the United

    States Steel Corporation already produced 9,000,000 tons of

steel.[11]Its output constituted in 1901, 66.3 per cent, and in 1908, 56.1

    per cent of the total output of steel in the United

States.[12]The

    output of ore was 43.9 per cent and 46.3 per cent,

    respectively.

The report of the American Government Commission on Trusts

    states: “Their superiority over competitors is dueto the

    magnitude of their enterprises and their excellent technical

    equipment. Since its inception, the Tobacco Trust has devoted all

    its efforts to the universal substitution of mechanical for manual

    labour. With this end in view it has bought up all patents that

    have anything to do with the manufacture of tobacco and has spent

    enormous sums for this purpose. Many of these patents at first

    proved to be of no use, and had to be modified by the engineers

    employed by the trust. At the end of 1906, two subsidiary

    companies were formed solely to acquire patents. With the same

    object in view, the trust has built its own foundries, machine

    shops and repair shops. One of these establishments, that in

    Brooklyn, employs on the average 300 workers; here experiments are

    carried out on inventions concerning the manufacture of

    cigarettes, cheroots, snuff, tinfoil for packing, boxes,

    etc. Here, also, inventions are

perfected.”[13]“Other trusts also

    employ what are called development engineers whose business it is

    to devise new methods of production and to test technical

    improvements. The United States Steel Corporation grants big

    bonuses to its workers and engineers for all inventions that raise

    technical efficiency, or reduce cost of

production.”[14]

In German large-scale industry, e.g., in the chemical industry,

    which has developed so enormously during these last few decades,

    the promotion of technical improvement is organised in the same

    way. By 1908 the process of concentration of production had

    already given rise to two main “groups” which, in their way, were

    also in the nature of monopolies. At first these groups

    constituted “dual alliances” of two pairs of big factories, each

    having a capital of from twenty to twenty-one million marks on the

    one hand, the former Meister Factory in Hochst and the Casella

    Factory in Frankfurt am Main; and on the other hand, the aniline

    and soda factory at Ludwigshafen and the former Bayer Factory at

    Elberfeld. Then, in 1905, one of these groups, and in 1908 the

    other group, each concluded anagreement with yet another big

    factory. The result was the formation of two “triple alliances,”

    each with a capital of from forty to fifty million marks. And

    these “alliances” have already begun to “approach” each other, to

    reach “an understanding” about prices,

etc.[15]

Competition becomes transformed into monopoly. The result is

    immense progress in the socialisation of production. In

    particular, the process of technical invention and improvement

    becomes socialised.

This is something quite different from the old free competition

    between manufacturers, scattered and out of touch with one

    another, and producing for an unknown market. Concentration has

    reached the point at which it is possible to make an approximate

    estimate of all sources of raw materials (for example, the iron

    ore deposits) of a country and even, as we shall see, of several

    countries, or of the whole world. Not only are such estimates

    made, but these sources are captured by gigantic monopolist

    associations. An approximate estimate of the capacity of markets

    is also made, and the associations “divide” them up amongst

    themselves by agreement. Skilled labour is monopolised, the best

    engineers are engaged; the means of transport are captured—railways in America, shipping companies in Europe and

    America. Capitalism in its imperialist stage leads directly to the

    most comprehensive socialisation of production; it, so to speak,

    drags the capitalists, against their will and consciousness, into

    some sort of a new social order, a transitional one from complete

    free competition to complete socialisation.

Production becomes social, but appropriation remains

    private. The social means of production remain the private

    property of a few. The general framework of formally recognised

    free competition remains, and the yoke of a few monopolists on the

    rest of the population becomes a hundred times heavier, more

    burdensome and intolerable.

The German economist, Kestner, has written a book especially

    devoted to “the struggle between the cartels and outsiders”, i.e.,

    the capitalists outside the cartels. Heentitled his workCompulsory Organisation, although, in order to present

    capitalism in its true light, he should, of course, have written

    about compulsory submission to monopolist associations. It is

    instructive to glance at least at the list of the methods the

    monopolist associations resort to in the present-day, the latest,

    the civilised struggle for “organisation”: (1) stopping supplies

    of raw materials ... (“one of the most important methods of

    compelling adherence to the cartel”); (2) stopping the supply of

    labour by means of “alliances” (i.e., of agreements between the

    capitalists and the trade unions by which the latter permit their

    members to work only in cartelised enterprises); (3) stopping

    deliveries; (4) closing trade outlets; (5) agreements with the

    buyers, by which the latter undertake to trade only with the

    cartels; (6) systematic price cutting (to ruin “outside” firms,

    i.e., those which refuse to submit to the monopolists. Millions

    are spent in order to sell goods for a certain time below their

    cost price; there were instances when the price of petrol was thus

    reduced from 40 to 22 marks, i.e., almost by half!); (7) stopping

    credits; (8) boycott.

Here we no longer have competition between small and large,

    between technically developed and backward enterprises. We see

    here the monopolists throttling those who do not submit to them,

    to their yoke, to their dictation. This is how this process is

    reflected in the mind of a bourgeois economist:

“Even in the purely economic sphere,” writes Kestner, “a

    certain change is taking place from commercial activity in the old

    sense of the word towards organisational-speculative

    activity. The greatest success no longer goes to the merchant

    whose technical and commercial experience enables him best of all

    to estimate the needs of the buyer, and who is able to discover

    and, so to speak, ‘awaken’ a latent demand; it goes to the

    speculative genius [?!] who knows how to estimate, or even only to

    sense in advance, the organisational development and the

    possibilities of certain connections between individual

    enterprises and the banks. . . .”

Translated into ordinary human language this means that the

    development of capitalism has arrived at a stage when, although

    commodity production still “reigns” and continues to be regarded

    as the basis of economic life, it has in realitybeen undermined

    and the bulk of the profits go to the “geniuses” of financial

    manipulation. At the basis of these manipulations and swindles

    lies socialised production; but the immense progress of mankind,

    which achieved this socialisation, goes to benefit . . . the

    speculators. We shall see later how “on these grounds”

    reactionary, petty-bourgeois critics of capitalist imperialism

    dream of goingbackto “free,” “peaceful” and “honest”

    competition.

“The prolonged raising of prices which results from the

    formation of cartels,” says Kestner, “has hitherto been observed

    only in respect of the most important means of production,

    particularly coal, iron and potassium, but never in respect of

    manufactured goods. Similarly, the increase in profits resulting

    from this raising of prices has been limited only to the

    industries which produce means of production. To this observation

    we must add that the industries which process raw materials (and

    not semi-manufactures) not only secure advantages from the cartel

    formation in the shape of high profits, to the detriment of the

    finished goods industry, but have also secured adominating

    positionover the latter, which did not exist under free

    competition.”[16]

The words which I have italicised reveal the essence of the

    case which the bourgeois economists admit so reluctantly and so

    rarely, and which the present-day defenders of opportunism, led by

    Kautsky, so zealously try to evade and brush aside. Domination,

    and the violence that is associated with it, such are the

    relationships that are typical of the “latest phase of capitalist

    development”; this is what inevitably had to result, and has

    resulted, from the formation of all-powerful economic

    monopolies.

I shall give one more example of the methods employed by the

    cartels. Where it is possible to capture all or the chief sources

    of raw materials, the rise of cartels and formation of monopolies

    is particularly easy. It would be wrong, however, to assume that

    monopolies do not arise in other industries in which it is

    impossible to corner the sources of raw materials. The cement

    industry, for instance, can find its raw materials everywhere. Yet

    in Germany this industry too is strongly cartelised. The cement

    manufacturershave formed regional syndicates: South German,

    Rhine-Westphalian, etc. The prices fixed are monopoly prices: 230

    to 280 marks a car-load, when the cost price is 180 marks! The

    enterprises pay a dividend of from 12 to 16 per cent—and it

    must not be forgotten that the “geniuses” of modern speculation

    know how to pocket big profits besides what they draw in

    dividends. In order to prevent competition in such a profitable

    industry, the monopolists even resort to various stratagems: they

    spread false rumours about the bad situation in their industry;

    anonymous warnings are published in the newspapers, like the

    following: “Capitalists, don’t invest your capital in the cement

    industry!”; lastly, they buy up “outsiders” (those outside the

    syndicates) and pay them compensation of 60,000, 80,000 and even

    150,000

marks.[17]Monopoly hews a path for itself

    everywhere without scruple as to the means, from paying a “modest”

    sum to buy off competitors, to the American device of employing

    dynamite against them.

The statement that cartels can abolish crises is a fable spread

    by bourgeois economists who at all costs desire to place

    capitalism in a favourable light. On the contrary, the monopoly

    created incertainbranches of industry increases and

    intensifies the anarchy inherent in capitalist productionas a

    whole.The disparity between the development of agriculture

    and that of industry, which is characteristic of capitalism in

    general, is increased. The privileged position of the most highly

    cartelised, so-calledheavyindustry, especially coal and

    iron, causes “a still greater lack of co-ordination” in other

    branches of industry—as Jeidels, the author of one of the

    best works on “the relationship of the German big banks to

    industry,”

admits.[18]

“The more developed an economic system is,” writes Liefmann, an

    unblushing apologist of capitalism, “the more it resorts to risky

    enterprises, or enterprises in other countries, to those which

    need a great deal of time to develop, or finally, to those which

    are only of local

importance.”[19]Theincreased risk is connected in

    the long run with a prodigious increase of capital, which, as it

    were, overflows the brim, flows abroad, etc. At the same time the

    extremely rapid rate of technical progress gives rise to

    increasing elements of disparity between the various spheres of

    national economy, to anarchy and crises. Liefmann is obliged to

    admit that: “In all probability mankind will see further important

    technical revolutions in the near future which will also affect

    the organisation of the economic system”... electricity and

    aviation.... “As a general rule, in such periods of radical

    economic change, speculation develops on a large

scale.”...[20]

Crises of every kind—economic crises most frequently,

    but not only these—in their turn increase very considerably

    the tendency towards concentration and towards monopoly. In this

    connection, the following reflections of Jeidels on the

    significance of the crisis of 1900, which, as we have already

    seen, marked the turning-point in the history of modern monopoly,

    are exceedingly instructive:

“Side by side with the gigantic plants in the basic industries,

    the crisis of 1900 still found many plants organised on lines that

    today would be considered obsolete, the ‘pure’ (non-combined)

    plants, which were brought into being at the height of the

    industrial boom. The fall in prices and the falling off in demand

    put these ‘pure’ enterprises in a precarious position, which did

    not affect the gigantic combined enterprises at all or only

    affected them for a very short time. As a consequence of this the

    crisis of 1900 resulted in a far greater concentration of industry

    than the crisis of 1873: the latter crisis also produced a sort of

    selection of the best-equipped enterprises, but owing to the level

    of technical development at that time, this selection could not

    place the firms which successfully emerged from the crisis in a

    position of monopoly. Such a durable monopoly exists to a high

    degree in the gigantic enterprises in the modern iron and steel

    and electrical industries owing to their very complicated

    technique, far-reaching organisation and magnitude of capital,

    and, to a lesser degree, in the engineering industry, certain

    branches of the metallurgical industry, transport,

etc.”[21]

Monopoly! This is the last word in the “latest phase of

    capitalist development.” But we shall only have a very

    insufficient, incomplete, and poor notion of the real power and

    the significance of modern monopolies if we do not take into

    consideration the part played by the banks.

[1]Figures

      taken fromAnnalen des deutschen Reichs, 1911, Zahn

—Lenin

[2]Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1912, p. 202

—Lenin

[3]Finance Capital, Russ. ed., pp. 286-87

—Lenin

[4]Hans

      Gideon Heymann,Die gemischten Werke im deutschen

      Grosseiseugewerbe, Stuttgart, 1904,(S. 256, 278).



—Lenin

[5]Hermann

Levy,Monopole, Kartelle und Trusts, Jena, 1909,

S. 286, 290,

—Lenin

[6]Th. Vogelstein, “Die finanzielle Organisation der

      kapitalistischen Industrie und die Monopolbildungen” inGrundriss der Sozialökonomik, VI. Abt., Tubingen,

      1914. Cf., also by the same author:Organisationsformen der

      Eisenindustrie und Textilindustrie in England und Amerika,

      Bd. 1, Lpz., 1910.

—Lenin

[7]Dr. Riesser,Die deutschen Grossbanken und ihre

      Konzentration im Zusammenhange mit der Entwicklung der

      Gesamtwirtschaft in Deutschland, 4. Aufl., 1912, S. 149;

      Robert Liefmann,Kartelle und Trusts und die Weiterbildung

      der volkswirtschaftlichen Organisation,2. Aufl., 1910,

      S. 25.

—Lenin

[8]Dr. Fritz Kestner,Der Organisationszwang. Eine Untersuchung

      über die Kämpfe  zwischen Kartellen und

      Aussenseitern, Berlin, 1912, S. 11.

—Lenin

[9]R. Liefmann,Beteiligungs- und

      Finanziertingsgesellschaften. Eine Studie

	über den modernen Kapitalismus und das

      Effektenwesen, 1. Aufl., Jena, 1909, S. 212.

—Lenin

[10]Ibid., S. 218.

—Lenin

[11]Dr. S. Tschierschky,Kartell und Trust, Göttingen,

      1903, S. 13.

—Lenin

[12]Tr. Vogelstein,Organisationsformen, S. 275.

—Lenin

[13]Report of the Commissioner of Corporations on the Tobacco

      Industry, Washington, 1909, p. 266, cited according to

      Dr. Paul Tafel,Die nordamerikanischen Trusts und ihre

      Wirkungen auf den Fortschritt der Technik, Stuttgart, 1913,

      S. 48.

—Lenin

[14]Dr. P. Tafel,ibid., S. 49.

—Lenin

[15]Riesser, op. cit., third edition, p. 547 et seq. The newspapers

      (June 1916) report the formation of a new gigantic trust which

      combines the chemical industry of Germany.

—Lenin

[16]Kestner, op.cit., S. 254

—Lenin

[17]L. Eschwege, “Zement” inDie Bank, 1909, S. 115

      et. seq.

—Lenin

[18]Jeidels,Das Verhältnis der deutschen Grossbanken zur

      Industrie mit besonderer Berüchsichtigung der

      Eisenindustrie, Leipzig, 1905, S. 271

—Lenin

[19]Liefmann, Beteiligungs- und Finanzierungsgesellschaften,

      S, 434.

—Lenin

[20]Ibid, S. 465-66

—Lenin

[21]Jeidels, op. cit., S. 108.

—Lenin